


VI

by Crowgirl



Series: Welcoming Silences [7]
Category: Foyle's War
Genre: Canon Disabled Character, Internal Monologue, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Ruminations, Thinking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-02
Updated: 2015-09-02
Packaged: 2018-04-18 14:09:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4708811
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crowgirl/pseuds/Crowgirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On the Wednesday evening, Paul does the dishes, hangs up the cloth, and pours himself a generous drink.</p>
            </blockquote>





	VI

A week later, he admits it isn’t working.

A week’s worth of evenings of leaving the station at four or five -- much earlier than is his habit. 

A week’s worth of solitary suppers and quiet hours spent in front of the electric fire with a book. 

A week’s worth of ending his evening with the nine o’clock news, which is never good. 

He had introduced variety with games of solitaire and, when that became too dull for bearing, an invented game where he amused himself trying to see how much of the pack had to be discarded before he could start correctly guessing the number and suit of a card pulled at random from the remainder.

And a week’s worth of evenings where he doesn’t think about Foyle.

Because if he does -- when his mind wanders -- his skin feels too tight, prickling all over as if he’s had a mild static shock, and he starts fidgeting. He finds himself rubbing together the fingers of the hand that isn’t holding his book, something on the page having reminded him of one of the prints on Foyle’s sitting room wall and then, unavoidably, of Foyle himself. It’s like he’s trying to reach out and catch something or remember the texture of something and, every time he catches himself doing it, he forces his hand flat on the arm of his chair.

On the Wednesday evening, almost a week after he had not had dinner with Foyle, he does the dishes, hangs up the cloth, and pours himself a generous drink. He sits down in front of the grate, as usual, and stares at it. 

This is a puzzle. He’s good at puzzles. Jane had once said he solved puzzles for a living and he thinks she wasn’t too far off. 

Jane. 

If she hadn’t left---

He takes a mouthful of liquor and holds it for a minute, letting it sting his tongue before he swallows.

No, it’s unfair to pass this on to her. Whatever problems the two of them had, they hadn’t sprung out of the ground full-formed when he came back from Norway. It was too late now to worry about where they had come from, what the first signs had been, whether he should have noticed something earlier. 

After her first visit to the hospital, when she had kissed him on the forehead as if he were a sick child, and clicked her way out of the ward, a nurse had congratulated him on having “such a thoughtful wife.”

‘Thoughtful?’

‘She seems so sweet. Very considerate of her coming in so soon to see you.’

He hadn’t known the nurse, and only saw her once again, so he had given her the benefit of the doubt for not knowing that he’d been in this hospital for two weeks before Jane had come anywhere near him. He had almost stopped expecting her and, when she did appear, he hadn’t been entirely happy she had come. 

Perhaps whatever had finally snapped between them had its roots in something that had been awkward to start with. Perhaps if he’d paid more or better or different attention, he would have noticed it -- but even that wasn’t a guarantee he could have fixed it. _Or wanted to,_ some traitorous part of himself points out. 

She tried to hide it, her distaste, but it was obvious she no longer wanted to touch him. During the time he had been home, it was clear she didn’t even like taking his arm when they walked somewhere. To say nothing of the way she had been actually _avoiding_ looking at him in their bedroom -- particularly the last few nights before she left. 

He didn’t think he’d come back into their house and made any greater demands on her than he ever had; in fact, he doesn’t remember doing anything much more than offer a kiss or two since he’d come home from the hospital. It isn’t as though he has felt terribly amorous! 

He remembers only one time since his return home where he had tried to suggest something a little more, sliding his hand around the curve of her waist in a careful suggestion and the immediate stiffening of her shoulders had been enough. She’d never been a particularly un-enthusiastic partner before but now -- Now was different. Clearly different. 

Perhaps she had always been humoring him, going along with what she thought he expected -- although why she would have done that is beyond him. And he’d like to think that wasn’t the case, but he’ll probably never know now.

He stretches out his feet towards the grate and studies them. There isn’t a lot of difference from this angle. Whoever had made his prosthetic had done a good job making the shoe and, apart from a few minor details, it looks as though he is wearing a matched pair, particularly when he stands up and the cuffs of his trousers hang lower. 

His knee aches a little but that’s a familiar, dull thing and he ignores it, taking another sip of whiskey. 

He doesn’t miss Jane.

That’s what this is coming down to. Oh, he notices her absence, regrets it as leaving the house cold and dark in an increasingly cold and dark season, misses having a meal ready for him, but outside of that-- He misses what she was like before he joined up, what they had had in the first days of their marriage. And, thinking back on it, perhaps what he's remembering hadn't even been what was happening. 

Paul looks down into his glass, swirls the amber liquid thoughtfully for a minute, and then looks back at the glowing bars of the grate. 

How could he miss someone who gave every impression of being repulsed by his presence? It wasn’t that she had been openly cruel about it. She hadn’t called him names or “told him what she thought of him” -- her body did that for her without any words.

He is going to end up divorced. He’s fairly certain this is what’s going to happen. Every time he thinks about it, he finds himself considering it as more and more of a certainty; this will just be the next step between them and he is unhappy about it, yes, but not to the point of heartbreak. It’s as though the whole thing had already happened, months ago. Just this morning he’d found himself considering what he could do with her sewing room after the papers were signed and the thought had been a _when_ and not an _if._

So. He has the answer to that puzzle. All he has to do now is wait for what he feels is the inevitable message from her. It wasn’t as if her parents or her brothers had ever been so delighted with him as an in-law that they would be exerting themselves on his behalf. He snorts into his glass a little; one of her brothers had made it more than clear on the last occasion they met exactly what he thought of having a policeman as a member of the family. _That_ would be something he would not miss putting up with.

He swirls the remains of his drink, takes another sip, and contemplates the toes of his shoes. 

That solves half the puzzle -- or, perhaps, one of two interconnected puzzles. 

Foyle is more complicated.

It’s funny in a way he doesn't want to examine too closely that his relationship with his superior officer is more complex than his relationship with his _wife_ but perhaps he should have expected that. Working with Foyle before the war was-- had been-- Well, it had been---

He frowns at his glass. 

It had been complicated. 

At the time, he hadn’t been sure why -- why it seemed easier to work long evenings and easier to come in early in the mornings, and why he wanted to think that Foyle looked always a little happier to see him already at his desk in the morning rather than having to wait for him to come in, and why Foyle remembered his little preferences -- bitter, cod, no sugar, pens -- and not anyone else’s. Or why he had found himself picking and choosing among work stories to tell Jane over dinner -- why he rarely retold the stories Foyle told him, even just small stories about Andrew growing up or plans for a weekend trip to London or the results of an evening fishing trip. 

He takes the rest of the whiskey in one long swallow and forces himself to look at it straight on: He had kept Foyle to himself like he would have kept a girlfriend from the lads until he was sure of her. 

The tingling in his fingertips -- the feeling that has him rubbing them together now, gently, circling -- that’s the same feeling he used to have before he reached out for Jane’s hand in the dimness of the cinema, fumbling a little on the skirt of her dress, feeling the possibilities of her thigh under the fabric. And that tightness in his gut, that feeling that’s almost trembling -- he knows that, too. 

His mother had been out one evening -- he doesn’t remember where she had been going, but it was something that was going to keep her in town overnight. Jane had ducked in through the back garden after dark. The settee was too short and his bed was too narrow but he still remembered the catch in his throat when Jane lifted her slip over her head and undid the clasp of her brassiere. 

He thinks of the summers when he was sixteen, seventeen, eighteen and of David. He’d had the same feeling with David every day that last summer. At eighteen he hadn’t had a name for it and he’s not sure he does now, except that he knows where that feeling leads. And except that with Jane the feeling had been the right thing, it was what he was supposed to feel. And now with Foyle---

 _‘Fuck,’_ he says, his voice clear and loud in the silence of the room and drops his head back against the top of the chair.


End file.
